Mariners' Jason Kanzler hire rewrites Jerry Dipoto's failed manager playbook

The Seattle Mariners have a new manager, and it's Jason Kanzler. Like Scott Servais and Dan Wilson before him, he's coming to the job with no prior managerial experience at the major league level. Yet rather than the same ol' play out of Jerry Dipoto's failed playbook, this feels different.

The news of Kanzler's hiring, which came first from MLB.com's Daniel Kramer, puts a period at the end of a sentence that had begun to feel like a run-on. Midway through last week, the search for Dan Wilson's replacement was reportedly down to Kanzler and Joe Espada. That it dragged into this week had some speculating that new horses had entered the race, but nope.

Between Espada and Kanzler, only Espada had managed in the big leagues before. That was arguably the best thing Espada had going for him, as his three years skippering the Houston Astros between 2024 and 2026 resulted in twice as many AL West titles (two) than the Mariners have won since 2002 (one).

Moreover, Dipoto said in September that his preference was to hire someone who had managed in the bigs. That seemed to indicate he had learned his lesson from his experiences with Servais and Wilson. Neither had experience when he was hired, and both ended up getting unceremoniously canned.

Well, so much for that. Instead of a battle-tested 51-year-old, the Mariners have decided the best guy for them is a 36-year-old who's been a coach and a director of player development, but never a manager.

Jason Kanzler has impressive credentials for a 36-year-old who has never managed before

Unlike Wilson, Kanzler is at least coming to the job with ample experience in the modern game and the reputation to show for it. His recent background as the Chicago Cubs' director of player makes him more akin to Servais, who did the same job for the Texas Rangers from 2006 to 2011. Unlike Servais, though, Kanzler has a World Series ring from his time as a major league coach for the Astros.

He won said ring in 2022, when his main contribution was the magic touch that turned Jeremy Peña into the MVP of the ALCS and the World Series. Kanzler got to share the dugout with Espada, who was the bench coach at the time, and, more importantly, with Dusty Baker. There aren't many better managers to learn from, especially if the goal is to learn how to get everyone in a clubhouse to pull in the same direction.

Following a 76-86 season in which accountability became an alien concept, replicating Baker's talent for getting players to buy in will be a crucial first step for Kanzler. And some how, some way, he'll need to get the Mariners to play cleaner, smarter, more dynamic baseball than they did in 2026.

Hopefully, his work with the Cubs bodes well. Even if Kanzler didn't work directly under Craig Counsell, it's a positive that he had some proximity to one of the best Xs and Os managers in baseball today. And while the Cubs lacked pitching this year, that their identity as a contender was built on overwhelming offense and lockdown defense is another positive. The Mariners would do well to try and take after the Cubs on both fronts.

Between Kanzler's hiring and last week's hiring of CJ Gillman as the club's hitting coach, it's hard to ignore the sudden player development flavor in the Mariners' dugout. It's not exactly what Dipoto hinted at in September, and there's certainly risk in Kanzler's and Gillman's limited shared experience working in a major league dugout.

There is, however, upside as well. Those on the player development side of baseball are on the front lines of innovation, where sound theories are (hopefully) turned into successful practices. This is the arena in which Kanzler and Gillman have cut their teeth, and there's a nice balance between how one is a familiar face and one is not. Gillman worked with Mariners minor leaguers before he joined the Washington Nationals for this season, whereas Kanzler is the outside voice Dipoto said he wanted.

As happened with Servais and Wilson, it could be that this pivot to Kanzler will also end in disaster. But at least it's something different, and that's good enough for now.

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